Pages From Titan's Very Awesome FLASH GORDON ON THE PLANET MONGO: SUNDAYS 1934-1937!!

A month or two ago, I wrote about Titan's reissuance of ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY - saying it was likely the coolest book I've come across all year.

While this may still prove true...I haven't finalized my declaration, as the year isn't over just yet...Titan's brand new release of collected FLASH GORDON comics is most certainly giving it a run for its money.

Presented in hardcover with gold embossed lettering and bordering (the reflectivity of which is not evident in the image above), FLASH GORDON ON THE PLANET MONGO offers Peter Maresca's beautifully presented reprints of the legendary Alex Raymond and Don Moore strips which ran from 1934-1937. This is the first of several such books - Titan's has presently scheduled up to Volume 4, and more entries are pending. With luck, we'll get as much as possible - because this is a blast.

The impact of Raymond and Moore's work on the SF/fantasy genre as a whole can not be overstated. It created a conceptual and visual template which was evident not only in a number of direct adaptations of their material, like this 1936 serial...

...but impacting a bevy of highly influential genre entries. FORBIDDEN PLANET (kinda/sorta), STAR TREK, the STAR WARS universe, and many other genre are indebted to Raymond and Moore's vision. Their work...mattered...and continues to matter...to people like us. Titan re-issuing these strips so crisply presented and thoroughly considered is a truly lovely turn.

At 203 pages, there's a great deal of information to take in throughout this first volume - but several qualities immediately evident with even a cursory glance. First and foremost? Early FLASH's efficiency of storytelling. Here's a page from the book which pretty much represents the whole of the Gordon character's backstory/origin story. This is how FLASH GORDON begins. (EMBIGGENABLE)

Pretty impressive how succinctly and expeditiously our hero, and by extension, readers are thrown into the action. This same deliberate and efficient pacing persists throughout much of this first book. Here, Raymond and Moore's work often serves as something of a taster...or sampler...rather than a full exploration of any given environment/setting. They afford us glimpses of a bigger whole, and leave us to imagine any further details. A tremendously provocative and effective narrative mechanism in many cases, which works particularly well here.

The second imminently noteworthy element is the story's SIZE. As fun as De Laurentiis' movie was, it only hinted at the scale possible in the FLASH GORDON universe...a vastness which is pointedly and repeatedly evoked herein. FLASH GORDON, on the page, is truly an epic. An epic which no adaption of this material has fully or adequately captured.

(EMBIGGENABLE)

Alex Ross and Doug Murray both provide individual introductions for the publication, which is available this week in bookstores, or can be found HERE in the US (HERE in the UK).

Highly recommended for Geeks interested in SF/Fantasy history, or for anyone seeking solid, fast-moving, large-scale adventure. This might make an excellent Christmas gift for the genre fan in your life, or simply be a great treat for anyone even fleetingly interested in getting back in touch with some time-tested genre roots.

This is very much, to borrow the strapline of THE RIGHT STUFF, 'How the future began...'

They also (once upon a time in my 80s grade-school days) used to play the old B&W Flash episodes on Saturday nights on New Jersey Network before Doctor Who came on...
Used to love that angry buzzing ship sound!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUbGkSfaKrs

It would have to be Flash Gordon. I actually do like the 1980 movie, and it has a warm place in my heart as the last movie my dad took me to see in theatres.
Such a brilliant visual setting and interesting characters. Could be done so well with the right cast and director. Peter Jackson comes to mind.

It's wonderful, an absolutely beautiful edition to showcase the gorgeous artwork and story Alex Raymond crafted. There just isn't work on this level done anymore, it's astounding stuff. Alex Ross does a fantastic foreward to the book, and he mentions how he - like a lot of us - first got their exposure to Flash Gordon from the 1980 movie. It's a movie I have deep, deep love for, something that's pure cinema - and that's a term I can apply in a very literal way to the work of Raymond shown in this book - it's cinema. It's like a still movie screen, its perfection.
I've loved every iteration of Flash Gordon, bar the dreadful scifi channel series, but this original work is not just good, not just wonderful, it's astounding. And the edition is just gorgeous.

from the start is older than Homer. Nothing new under the son. Hell, the characters and situations of say, "The Honeymooners," are right out of Roman theater: Ralph is the "miles gloriosus," Norton, the "parasitus," Alice, the "uxor."

I will not hear it being denigrated, you joyless twerps! Literal adherence to a printed source is not the only mark of quality in an adaptation. Gorgeous to look at, intentionally hilarious, with one of the best scores you'll ever encounter, it's a movie for happy people who love life. Just because it isn't po-faced and self-important like every other comic book movie these days doesn't mean we shouldn't value it. Sure, you could make a great new adaptation that would be DIFFERENT, but it wouldn't be BETTER.

Alex Raymond's artwork is still some of my favorite. But I remember reading somewhere that Hal Foster, the artist of Prince Valiant, started out as a ghost-artist for Raymond.
Although I could be getting it confused with the Tarzan strip from around the same era.

I see none of the romance of the Barsoon novels in the bloody movie. The movie wants to be like modern day gritty and pseudo-anti-hero and all those idiotic tropes used by today's blockbusters that try to be edgy and intune with the kids. There's nothing in that movie that harks back to the high adventure spirit of the books, it's all replaced by modern day action movie bullshit. To say the movie missed the mark is an understatement, it's not even on the same planet. It doesn't matter that the director has made good movies before, in John Carter he showed little more intelligence then Michael Bay. Barsoon for the Michael Bay crowd, that's what the movie is.